garden

New (to me) Toronto eats:

Beerbistro: lunch is always good in the financial district

 Rustle & Still Cafe: interior goals for a den, the food is also delicious. Definitely coming back to try the drinks

Magical Taste of China: Jeff's new Chinatown fav

snow

Jeff got an instapot and this is what we made first:

Taiwanese beef noodle soup via The Woks of Life

I love braises, definitely the best flavour value for the least effort, cost...and time now with the instapot.

Muji

Found an interesting magazine at the Chengdu Muji store with each issue featuring a different brand. The one I picked up is obviously about Muji :p

Some interesting quotations:

Muji for me is like white rice. By itself, white rice doesn't look like anything special - but it tastes delicious when you combine it with different side dishes. I can eat it everyday and never get sick of it. Luxury brands, in contrast, are like steak. Steak is a food hat possess flavour and of itself. It's delicious. But it doesn't go with everything. You can't eat it every day.

"Opinion: Professor Ken Kusunoki"

the idea of having 'enough' entails not only consuming and owning less but being enough at ease to give myself free space and free time, and being aware of what I really need

"Muji style: Paris / Maud Lepetit"

It's about taking care to choose something good for you, then treasuring and loving it and keeping it by your side for a long time.

"Muji style: Seoul / Jung Eun Yang"

I've started to orient my days around my role as father of a 4-year-old daughter and a 10-month-old son, and as husband to my wife. When I'm spending time at home with my family, eating with them, or out walking with them, or playing in the park, I'll sometimes get ideas or inspiration for a project. That's when my day as a designer begins. When I'm working on something and know there's not going to be more progress or the rest of the day, or I suddenly miss my kids - that's when I get the sense of "enough". Repeating this kind of daily routine as a designer, I've learned moderation, and through this moderation my life has taken its current shape.

"Muji style: Berlin / Uli Budde" - work-life balance goals?

Muji is a company that satisfies one of humanity's two conflicting desires. People are always whirled around by various urges. There's an urge to move towards more excitement and violence, and there's an urge to return to more decency and to the basics, to a quieter place.

"Advisory Board: Naoto Fukasawa"

We often talk about our "huge strategy," which, for our company, is "to serve a purpose."
...
Around the time Muji was launched, Seiji Tsutsumi had the thought, "Do all (women) wear makeup because they want to?" After all, there are probably people who don't want to wear makeup. Every day on TV, we're being shown celebrities who've had their makeup done and been made to wear dresses and hold designer bags. Humans, being by nature greedy animals, see this and want to compare ourselves to others. The consumer society exploits this mentality in extremely commercial ways. Even people who want to live true to themselves and their own aesthetic will find it easy to get swept up in the currents of society. Muji was created to protect t the freedom of such people.
...
The people who started Muji didn't have commercial outcomes in mind. Muji was started with pure - even naive - intentions.

"Masaaki Kanai"

kao

Back from my latest trip back to Chengdu, hurray for another month of rest before I pack up my life again ;o;

I stuck with the purpose of visiting family and stayed in the city the whole time. This always means that I literally turned on my camera twice, but all the photos that made it on the internet are from my phone. As usual, food & their commentary are over on facebook.

Otherwise my trip consists mostly of telling the same life updates to everyone that I meet; thinking, or rather being confused, about what family means to me; hearing stories of student life with some mixture of horror and amazement; being reminded, often with irritation, of the cultural differences; reeeeaallly annoyed by the cigarette smoke everywhere but especially indoors (except for malls, I don't recall anyone smoking inside malls); and feeling pretty cold until aircon was installed.

Hurray for central air conditioning, better air quality, and a more sane education system here.
Boo for insane cellular plan costs.

river

It is definitely more bearable to visit in the early winter times, although the sky is almost always some variation of grey depending on the pollution levels. To be fair I did see the blue sky twice, maybe thrice, and the temperatures were fairly high. There's still flowers blooming despite the season.

stream

My only touch is suggesting a fix for the mosaic

orchid

I don't think I personally have any photos of the apartment with its previous appearance :(

At least the views outside haven't changed.